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Thornton Prince; Nashville’s Royalty

Hot chicken is everywhere these days, even in Brooklyn. But there’s one thing that hipsters around the country can’t take away from us, and that’s that hot chicken unquestionably belongs to Nashville forever.

Local lore is that hot chicken – the hot chicken – was created in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood on the outskirts of East Nashville. Thornton Prince, the founder of Prince’s Chicken Shack, was quite the looker and had a wild streak in him as Tennessee men are want to have. With that, he was also a well known womanizer. One time, Thornton had stayed out all night doing god knows what and his girlfriend spiked his breakfast with extra cayenne pepper as revenge.

Luckily, her plan backfired, and Thornton liked the chicken so much that he and his brothers opened Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in the 1930’s.

Prince’s keeps it in the family, where now Thornton’s grand niece, Andre Prince Jeffries, runs the show. They no longer serve the chicken for breakfast, but it has become a staple of late-night cheap eats (open till 4 am on Fridays and Saturdays).